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John Locke
John Locke FRS (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the "Father of Classical Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. Tossup Questions # This philosopher argued that the real essences of substances can never be known, and that our "species" and "genus" terms are nominal essences. One book by this philosopher uses the example of light falling on porphyry rock to argue that colors are observer-dependent secondary qualities. That book by this man was refuted chapter-by-chapter in Gottfried Leibniz's New Essays on Human Understanding. This man's work (*) Some Thoughts on Education drew from his earlier contention that the human mind is born without innate ideas, introduced in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who argued that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa and wrote Two Treatises of Government. # One of this philosopher's works was dated a decade earlier than previously thought in a landmark 1960 edition by Peter Laslett. This philosopher invented a term for a category of names that group abstract general ideas according to their natural similitude; those are called "sortals". He argued that there must exist an indefinable, quality-less base to which qualities called "accidents" must adhere. That notion of "pure (*) substance in general" was postulated by this secretary to Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury. The first part of a work by him attacks the Patriarcha of Robert Filmer. In that work, he proposed that whatever a man has "mixed his labor with" is his property. For 10 points, name this philosopher of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government. # This philosopher denies that he is constructing useless "castles in the sky" in a work that uses gold to illustrate the importance of language in bridging the gap between real and nominal essences. Another book by this man claims that slavery is never possible when following the laws of nature. That work described how money has circumvented the usual limits of man's (*) ownership of resources. This man wrote a book that distinguishes between simple ideas of sensation and complex ideas of the mind and primary and secondary qualities of the external world. This philosopher refuted Hobbes' negative state of nature in a book that argues civil society's duty was to protect man and his possessions. For 10 points, name this author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding who claimed that man was entitled to life, liberty, and property in Two Treatises of Government. # In the second part of one work, this thinker states that people own themselves, and that they come to own other things by mixing their labor with those things. In another work, this thinker makes a distinction between primary qualities, like shape and motion, and secondary qualities, like color. In that work, this thinker discusses the idea of the mind as a blank slate or tabula rasa. For 10 points, name this British empiricist and natural-law theorist who wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government. # One work by this philosopher warns parents against loving their children's faults and claims parents must respect their children as "rational creatures" once they reach maturity. Another work by this man uses the question of what holds up a tortoise supporting an elephant supporting the earth to illustrate the limits of human knowledge. This author of "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" used the examples of a ball and the scent of a rose to outline the difference between simple and complex ideas in a work that refutes the idea that the mind has innate knowledge and instead proposes it is a tabula rasa, or blank slate. For 10 points, name this English thinker who claimed that men have the right to "life, liberty, and property" and wrote Essay Concerning Human Understanding.